Lucky Break

Reading Roald Dahl's book The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which I read a million times when small and which of course had me staring into candle flames and trying to see what was on the other side of playing cards. I got pretty good at it, too!

As far as I remember.

The book ends with the first story he ever wrote, but right before that is his novella (or something) called Lucky Break, the story of how he became a writer. Basically he had not the slightest intention of doing so, was flying fighter planes and all but got injured and sent to some embassy, but one day C.S. Forester walked into his office to ask questions about the war, and they went to lunch and couldn't eat and write things down at the same time, so Roald Dahl offered to write up notes for Forester to use in his story. Easy, right?

C.S. Forester gave him only these directions:

"Please, let me have plenty of detail. That's what counts in our business, tiny little details, like you had a broken shoelace on your left shoe or a fly settled on the rim of your glass at lunch or the man you were talking to had a broken front tooth. Try to think back and remember everything."

R.D: "I'll do my best."

The story he wrote is outrageously brilliant, but it's also kind of not a story. It tells of several flights he made as an airman in WWII and about getting shot down and being rescued and then recovering in delirium at a hospital. Finally he comes back to consciousness.

Is that a story?

I don't think I know what a story is. My definition tends to be kind of more Robert McKee, with the big changes and the character arcs and the first A then B.

But I don't know how to write a short story AT ALL, or maybe I'm too tangled up in my brains to do what is actually the simplest thing. Just tell what happened. Even if you're making it up.

Are you really allowed to do that? Just tell what happened? About things that actually happened? Because if that's the case, I'm full up with stories. I just don't think of them as stories.

I tend to think: would someone sitting across from me at a table, each of us with a beer, want to listen to this all the way through? Or would we get diverted 1/8 of the way in with their story about a road trip to University of Michigan? Maybe that can be part of it, come to think of it.

Maybe I spent too much time studying medieval exempla, these sort of fables with a giant moral imposed on them. They're actually kind of hilarious because they don't mean anything--I mean, it's not like Aesop, it's just weird little stories about a king and his daughter and he ended up getting run away with by a donkey and lived on bitter aloes at the well and when he came home his daughter had married the shoemaker and had twin boys. And at the end there's the moral: the daughter is the united church, see, and the twin boys are the Eastern and Western church....

Maybe you're not supposed to know what point your story is making until it makes it. I'm sort of afraid they are all going to mean LIFE IS SAD or WHAT CAN YOU DO BUT TRY? or other grim existential themes that will make you want to stab yourself in the eye. Oh well, I guess if that's what we find, then that's what we find.

I've also spent my life listening to someone trade stories with people. That person's are always about How She Triumphed Over Some Cheater or how she Knows Better Than That or how She's Meaner And So She Won. I mean, the overall picture is really not pleasant once you step back for a second.

The stories you tell and how you tell them reveal an awful lot about you. That is the whole entire point of the Canterbury Tales.

Speaking of C.S. Forester, how cool a story is that? The man calls his start in writing Lucky Break, because it really was. I think that's completely awesome.

I think the secret is to shut up and tell the story. Want to tell about all your road trips? Tell about your road trips. Tell about the one with that stupid girl I brought along to share gas (who ended up having no gas money) who told all the chemistry PhD candidates at Caltech that it was great to see people get excited about science for once. Want to write the saga of the horrible fiance from hell? Totally do it.

I also think it clears out your brain. And then you can read all that later and either it's cheap therapy OR you find something awesome you can use for something else. It's making quilt fabric, right? Later on you might cut it up for quilts, but you have to make the fabric first.

I never, ever do this. I don't write this way. Never ever ever never. Anne Lamott says to do it, I think Roald Dahl just said to do it, certainly C.S. Forester said to do it.

Maybe all you need to do is start out, "Here's an interesting thing that happened one time..." Remember all the detail, every bit. Write the beginning, middle, and end. See what happens. It's crazy but it just might work.